Carbon fiber passes 300,000-ton production capacity

Carbon fiber production is technologically challenging as well as energy-intensive. Up to now, the former has been an obstacle to manufacturing it in China, while energy costs have been an obstacle to producing it at affordable prices in the West too. But in the past year or two, carbon fiber has emerged as one of the materials which the Chinese have figured out how to produce at scale, bringing the necessary technical expertise inside China’s borders as well as investing in a dramatic expansion of production capacity – increasing supply and halving the price from $180,000 per ton to $100,000 per ton so far. In 2022, global carbon fiber demand was 135,000 tons, of which 74,400 tons in China (an…